A winter in Yalong Bay

摘要

In December 1784 the two ships of the last voyage of the Swedish East India Company's Third Charter wintered in Yalong Bay on the south coast of Hainan Island, China. This was an unusual event and someone in one of the ships involved, the Gustaf Adolph, chose to commemorate the experience with a variety of China export items of which a painting, two tankards, two punchbowls and a platter still exist. This article reports the consequences of a detailed analysis of it from a nautical perspective, which led to a fuller understanding of it, and of the details of the layover. The analysis also led to the rediscovery of a neglected Swedish manuscript chart made by one of the ship's officers at the time.